Wind River; Welcome to the Party
Wind River (Finally) Releases Virtualization Platform; Welcome to the Party
This
week Wind River announced availability of its long-anticipated
hypervisor for embedded systems. Originally announced in June of 2008,
Alameda finally appears to have a product ready to ship to OEMs.
Structurally,
the introduction makes sense. The company needs some way of
reconciling the attributes of their many and divergent embedded
platforms. A hypervisor provides a potential home for any or all of
them – in one neat package. At the very least the Wind hypervisor
provides a place to sell and install VxWorks, as a way to salvage RTOS
revenues.
The announcement and the materials supporting it primarily
tout multicore applications. However, Alameda is keenly interested in
all things mobile: they are members of LiMo and OHA and participate in
Moblin. Moreover, the mobile focus of Atom silicon from their new
parent company, Intel, signals that mobile virtualization is likely in
their sights as well.
Caveat Emptor – Mobile OEMs Beware
Technology stands on its own merits, but to make business sense,
successful technology needs the right supplier behind it. It’s too
early and the Wind virtualization product is likely too immature to
make definitive claims about its functionality or reliability.
However, it’s worth considering how the source for this technology
impacts its position in the mobile marketplace.
Double Lock-In
The Wind River embedded hypervisor locks OEMs into a single proprietary solution in both the short- and long-term.
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